All Along the Avenue: Prime Meridian of the South Side

Stretching five miles from Vickery Boulevard to Loop 820, Hemphill Street is the longest thoroughfare of the South Side. Seen along it:

Window of Gustavus Adolphus Lutheran Church (1912) at Broadway.

The La Cava Building (1927) at Magnolia, built by W. B. La Cava, originally housed a drugstore. Architect James Black Davies also designed the South Side Masonic Lodge Building (1925) on Magnolia and the Western Union Building (1931) on Main Street downtown.

A chimney.

Mural on the wall of the Paris Coffee Shop at Magnolia, circa 2011.

Former home of school board president George C. Clarke, for whom the nearby school is named.

The automotive world has Manny, Moe, and Jack. The entertainment world has Larry, Curly, and Moe. Hemphill Street has these guys.

The Berry Theater originally was the White Theater.

The Sisters of St. Mary of Namur (founded in Belgium in 1819) built their Academy of Our Lady of Victory (1910, Sanguinet and Staats) at Shaw Street as a boarding school. Their St. Ignatius Academy (1889, J. J. Kane) downtown became a day school. OLV offered girls a Christian education and had dorm facilities for 150 students. It later offered classes through junior college. It is now a residential complex for Fort Worth’s creative community.

In 1925 this new sanctuary (Sanguinet and Staats) greatly enlarged Hemphill Presbyterian Church (1911) at Allen Street.

Reeves-Walker house (1908) at Lilac Street. The house was built by banker William Reeves at a cost of $40,000.

At the south end of Hemphill the Quartermaster Depot was built in 1942 as a distribution center for the military during World War II. Spurs of the Missouri, Kansas and Texas and the Santa Fe railroads were extended to the depot. The depot covers a square mile from James Avenue to the Katy track. It was the nation’s third-largest military supply center.

A house (1925) at the corner of Broadus Street. I’ve always suspected that Captain Swabbie lives there.

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About the Header

Photo from about 1910 looks north on Houston Street from just below 10th Street. Along the left side, near to far: Raymond House rooms and Burns and Hamilton paint store, Lyric vaudeville theater (1907; Park Central Hotel is on those sites today), Flatiron Building (1907, Sanguinet and Staats), Western National Bank Building (1906, Sanguinet and Staats), square tower of the Board of Trade Building (c. 1889, Armstrong and Messer). Along the right side, near to far: Hotel Melba, A. J. Anderson’s gun store, and Elks European Hotel (the Convention Center is on those sites today).